"When they put the paintings and the sculptures up, I cried, it was so beautiful" says curator Lynn Orr as she walks the first of the galleries in her exhibition "The Cult of Beauty" at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Calif. on May 21, 2012. It took her 15 year to do the research on the British Aesthetic Movement from 1860-1900 and to collect the pieces from around the world.

Photo: Siana Hristova, The Chronicle

"When they put the paintings and the sculptures up, I cried, it was...

Lynn Orr, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's widely respected curator of European art for 29 years, has apparently been let go by the city-owned institution that's run by a private nonprofit corporation.

Neither museum officials nor Orr would comment on her employment status at the Fine Arts Museums, the institution that oversees the M.H. de Young and Legion of Honor museums, where Orr organized many well-received exhibitions of French, Dutch and Venetian painting, what she termed "avant-garde Victorian art" and medieval tomb sculptures. But she hasn't been at work since Nov. 20, and although no one is saying why, colleagues fear she's been given the ax.

"I don't know whether she's been fired or quit or is being required to take a sabbatical. No one has given us an explanation," said Steven Lockwood, a senior museum registrar who returned from vacation last week to find Orr gone and rumors flying.

"People are very concerned about what happened to her," said Lockwood, a 17-year veteran who's a shop steward for the union that represents about 100 museum employees. Orr and her fellow curators are nonunion management employees, who, like the majority of the 500 or so people on the museum staff, work for the privately funded Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums, not the city. "She's an enormous asset to this institution. She knows things about the European collection that no one else does. She can't be replaced."

Museums spokesman Ken Garcia declined to comment on Orr's status, saying it was a personnel matter.

Reached at home, Orr, 65, said she couldn't comment on her situation.

Her departure from the museums, which have been without a director since John Buchanan died a year ago this month, comes on the heels of acrimonious labor negotiations, the installation of a controversial new time-clock system that reads employees' fingerprints, and the dismissal of another longtime staffer, photographer Joe McDonald, who said he was fired the week before Thanksgiving after 27 years.

"They accused me of conflict of interest, of using their computer for my personal business," said McDonald, who denies the accusation. He's fighting his dismissal through his union, Local 1021 of the Service Employees International Union, and talking to a lawyer. "I never used their computer for my personal use. For one thing, it's too slow. I think I was unjustly targeted so they could get rid of me, a union member, and get rid of my position."

McDonald was one of three staff members who wore prison stripes to a meeting with managers to talk about concerns over management "using our fingerprints as the method to clock in and out at the Museums," as it was stated in a petition signed by about 100 employees, among them Orr and other curators and non-hourly employees who are not required to punch in and out.

Garcia declined to comment on McDonald.

Meanwhile, word of Orr's departure from the museums stunned the art community.

"I'm shell-shocked," said Gary Garrels, senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "She's the model curator, with integrity, scholarship and a deep network of connections, someone who's incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about the art she's sharing. It's a huge loss."

Said Chronicle Art Critic Kenneth Baker: "Curators of her distinction, experience and accomplishment do not come along every day, or every decade, for that matter. I have seen firsthand, even in Europe, the respect and fondness with which art world colleagues greet her. The sort of goodwill and standing that her scholarship and exhibition record have won for her and for the Fine Arts Museums cannot be replaced by a newcomer, no matter how ambitious. For the Northern California arts community, this hits like a death in the family."

Fine Arts Museums Trustee Belva Davis heard there'd been "a shakeup" of some sort at the museum, but no names were mentioned. She said she expected to find out what was going on at a private executive board meeting Dec. 5.